Why a Booktrail?
1990s – The relationship between two young friends; the natural dialogue and the wild tale telling; the search for family and the search for the elusive Amnesia Clinic
The Amnesia Clinic
What you need to know before your trail
Anti, an English boy living in Quito, Ecuador, strikes up a friendship with a flamboyant classmate of his. Fabián is everything Anti isn’t: handsome, athletic and popular.
Anti is stuck in the dull ex-pat world of his parents. But Fabian again lives with his uncle Suarez – a keen teller of stories who tells the boys exciting tales that they both enjoy.
But he never talks of Fabian’s parents for some reason. They apparently died in a car accident but no one seems to know. Anti is keen to find out more but when he does some snooping and finds out that his mother might be living in what is called to as an ‘Amnesia Clinic’ – a hospital for memory loss patients
Soon the two of them embark on a journey across Ecuador in search of an ‘Amnesia Clinic’ that may, or may not exist
Travel Guide
Quito really comes to life here and is evoked through the eyes of young boys which makes for a nice twist.
Quito has two very different sides to it – a poor side and a rich side and the differences between the two are neatly explored via the boy’s friendship. Their journey across Ecuador to the elusive Amnesia clinic is both a search for the truth and a journey of friendship.
The story of the Amnesia clinic starts off as one of these stories, and its Anti’s way of consoling his friend, of them both trying to understand what neither of them knows or understands.
This journey takes them across Ecuador via different modes of transport, meeting various characters along the way and going to some strange places and beaches. This is an adventure of two parts however – the actual journey and the hope that Fabian has, that he might actually find out what happened.
“Nevertheless there was something exhilarating about embarking on a journey with so little baggage…”
The journeys they go on together teach the boys about their country such as when he remembers an old history lesson of when San Martin and Bolivar met at Guayaquil in 1822.
He questions – “If people are willing just to step aside for you because of your place in the story, power and responsibility became a lot easier to deal with, in my view. And where does that leave those of us with mediocre destinies?”
A story about the power of stories and nostalgia for childhood dreams
Where Next?
